When ºüÀêÊÓƵ Ambush goalie Paulo Nascimento first heard talk about The Soccer Tournament earlier this year, he thought it was a scam. A soccer tournament with a $1 million first prize? Like that will happen. Ambush captain William Eskay was hesitant when he heard about it because of the possibility of getting hurt.
“I was just going to stay home,†he said.
When Ambush teammate Marcel Berry heard about it, he couldn’t wait. As a big basketball fan, he knew of The Soccer Tournament’s older sibling, The Basketball Tournament, which began in 2014 and has evolved in a regular and widely watched event on the summer sports calendar. So a seven-vs.-seven small-field soccer tournament in Cary, North Carolina? Sign him up.
“I knew it was going to be great tournament,†he said after a recent Ambush practice at the Family Arena in St. Charles. “I decided I just had to be on one of the teams.â€
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The three ended up not only taking part in the tournament but winning the whole thing in June and getting their share of the $1 million winner-take-all first prize, which after team expenses and then divided among the players was estimated to be between $15,000 and $20,000 per person for a weeklong event. That’s very good for indoor players who aren’t the most lavishly compensated.
“It was like the best soccer experience I’ve ever been to,†Eskay said. “If that was a job, I’d be doing it. ... Nobody would be upset with the payout.â€
Stiff competition
There were teams at the tournament representing some recognizable soccer clubs — Borussia Dortmund, West Ham, Wolverhamton, Wrexham, Necaxa — and teams with past U.S. international players Geoff Cameron and Brek Shea, but the three Ambush players played for a club called Newtown Pride out of Sandy Hook, Connecticut.
Though they had no prior connection with the club, a longtime power in Connecticut amateur soccer, it was looking to augment its roster with professional indoor players under coach Onua Obasi, a Central Connecticut grad and an indoor player currently with the Baltimore Blast of the Major Arena Soccer League, in which the Ambush play. It turned out to be a great idea in a competition that featured a small field, unlimited substitutions and changes on the fly.
“What we found out is the indoor experience prepares you extremely well for this tournament, which nobody was sure,†Eskay said. “We were one of the true indoor teams that like every player had played indoor at some point minus maybe one guy. And it turns out that’s the skill set you want. I don’t think guys knew that at first, but yeah, we found that it translated really well. Particularly like defending with smaller numbers and substituting with smaller numbers and using your goalkeeper as an extra player, those three things kind of really pushed us above other teams.â€
Nascimento’s ball skills turned out to be one of the big things for Newtown.
“It was a seven-on-seven game, so I could join the attack a lot,†he said. “And the coach, he made the system around building from the back using my skills. Teams had no idea how to defend that. There was some advantage for us.â€
TST also used what it called Target Score Time, similar to the Elam Ending used in TBT. The winning team would be the first to get to a target number, set at one goal above what the leading team had when regulation play ended, which ensured that the game would end on a goal rather than a team running out the clock at the corner flag. In addition, if neither team hit the target number in five minutes, each team would take a player off the field, going from seven on seven to six on six to five on five until there was a winner.
Newtown took the event seriously, getting to North Carolina a week in advance to start training, which increased its overhead. The team lost its first game in group play but soon gathered its confidence and went on a roll. Berry said the team felt little pressure going into a game where the winners got $1 million and the losers got $0. Over the four days of TST, the team felt like it was the best there, a point confirmed when Kelvin Nunes scored the $1 million goal for Newtown 15 minutes into target time, after the teams were down to five players per side, for a 2-0 win over a squad made up mostly of members of Canada’s national futsal team.
Lessons learned
In addition to the winnings, Eskay said he learned some things from his time at TST.
“It was really validating to have a group of indoor players win the whole thing because there’s a lot of big names,†Eskay said. “Everyone who showed up thought they showed up with an all-star team, and it turned out, actually, we were quite a big chunk better than most groups there, so it’s validating as an indoor player. To say, ‘Hey, we can play some ball and actually you guys have to get up to our level when it’s in a small-space kind of thing.’ So that was great.
“And then I’ve never been in a winner-take-all tournament. So that was just an amazing feeling, you know? Huge media presence, everyone I had ever met in my whole life reached out to me and said, ‘I watched every game, that was awesome.’ There’s nothing like celebrating a championship with a giant check and with guys you’ve been hanging out with two weeks it was it was really phenomenal feeling.â€
“Just surreal,†Berry said, “just winning a championship in any level. But to win a million-dollar tournament, the first of its kind and something that big and hopefully it just grows and grows. It just felt like a dream come true. You think about winning tournaments and winning games. TST never came to my mind as a kid. You never know that’s going to be a thing and it comes to fruition and you’re just like, you’re there and you see all the people in the fans and it’s a great experience. It was amazing.â€
The trio’s success hasn’t carried over to the Ambush. The team is 1-4 and plays on Thursday at Kansas City and returns home to Family Arena on New Year’s Eve.
“Rocky start I would say,†Eskay said. “But we won our last game at home, and things can change really quickly. We’re always dealing with little injuries and that can affect stuff. It’s a long season. We picked up new players, got to get in sync. Got to get guys working together. We’ll see.â€
One thing all three are sure of is they’ll be back in North Carolina in the offseason for the next edition of TST, which they know won’t be as easy to win now that teams have seen what it takes.
“Hopefully we do it again,†Berry said. “Twice in a row.â€